From the heart wrenching storylines that its role playing games deliver, to the weird and disturbing tentacle monsters that appear in its movies, there is no denying distinctive associations with anime. The style of over exaggerated weapons, the wide eyed visage and the green, red and even blue hair of it's heroes have become a modern day main stay.

Over the years, more and more video games have imported the anime image like early favorites such as Alex Kidd and Zillion to the modern favorites like Oni and the Final Fantasy series. Anime is a great syle for cartoon video games and thankfully will have no place what so ever in DOOM 3.

and the important bit again

Anime is a great style for cartoon video games and thankfully will have no place what so ever in DOOM 3.

On a serious note, other than maybe a mangadoom for doom3 (which i'm hardly sure that i'm going to pull off), i doubt that there'll be any anime mods going around and those that will will probably be the crappy ones that we don't talk about much. If i was to make a manga mod for doom3 i'd probably do it as a chance to try cel shading (should the engine be able to handle it) with stencil shading with the attempt to achieve some cool graphics. That and i'd stay away from the stereotypical anime styles; crappy hair, big eyes, or any pokemon\gayblade crap.

Coming back to the progress of project mangadoom, generally it's coming along OK. I am currently approaching the end of the cleanup phrase, and as soon as that is done the mod will nearly be finished. The cleanup phrase btw is generally when i fiddle around with the character design and make the sprites better (see the screenshot section of the above link, the new shotgun for example is so much better than the old one). I guess that's one of the reasons why mangadoom is taking so long as i wanna balance out the themes of doom and anime. To be fair i guess dsm was right all those months ago when he said that manga and doom don't mix. Even i'm finding it tricky to have an anime style running alongside with the gameplay and storyline of doom. It's like trying to eat cheeseburgers and icecream at the same.

Still i'm going to continue with the mod. I mean who is to say that Ghostbusters, Aliens vs Predator vs Terminator, or action doom fits in the doom universe perfectly? In my opinion , they don't but they're still good ideas for mods anyway. One thing everyone needs to remember is that mods are suppposed to be fun and worth the bother of downloading, and are a general expression of creativity from what engine is available. A good imagination overall for gameplay and design is what sells after all. It's only when decides that the next doom\quake\wolfenstein game will have an anime style is when we should all (which even includes an anime fan like me) start bitching and moaning. :P

Again coming back to mangadoom, a significant change in the structure would be that it won't use midi music, and instead will use mp3 tracks in a seperate mp3 wad. I give away too much about the music at the moment but what i should mention is that there won't be any singing in the mp3s (english or japanese). The other change is that the main bulk of the tc would be replacements for everything except the levels. The levels will be in sets of episodes (wads of 6 levels) and will play on the idea of the gradual progression of travelling to hell, and will hopefully continue beyond that. That way people can use my tc with other levels or iwads as well as my levels.

I may need help with the levels if it means anything but other than that this is a one man tc. Scary stuff.

Fingers crossed this should turn out pretty cool. My friend at school is begging me to give him a beta but generally there won't be any betas for the time being.

Will there be mangadoom 3? It's a maybe. I've had some good ideas for it, but if it was it wouldn't be a long way off. Should i do it, i'd try and make it scary, staying true to doom3's nature.

Let's first get this straight. I am verry supportive of the initial idea and does not have any anti-manga sentiments that some people carry.

There is however one big bad festering problem I can see. Your sprites suck! They don't do your awesome concept art any justice at all. Heads look tacked on their bodies. Many lack any sense of form. In fact they make me think of things like Duum2super or Insanity (which is NOT good).

You really need to practice doing art on the computer without pencils or scanners or anything. The idea is too good to waste like this.

BTW, was I clear when I said the concept art rules? Never abandon that cyberdemon concept.

Little Faith said:
There is however one big bad festering problem I can see. Your sprites suck! They don't do your awesome concept art any justice at all. Heads look tacked on their bodies. Many lack any sense of form. In fact they make me think of things like Duum2super or Insanity (which is NOT good).

You really need to practice doing art on the computer without pencils or scanners or anything. The idea is too good to waste like this.

Advice appreciated buddy. The zael would be the obvious example of heads taped on bodies, and i suppose it doesn't quite fit the original design. I guess that they look crappy because the base that i used for them, the old original sprites, were done when i was relatively a Newbie to sprite art. However i don't think that the new marine, shotgun, arachnotron and archvile look bad (the marine at least). The sprites for the zombies, caco and baron (i think all of those ones are shown in the screeny section) are *******ely going to be replaced by far better ones as i'm aware that they are crap. I felt i should say in advance.

Btw guys: By all means point out flaws with things like the sprites. I mean a lot of the flaws are being tackled as we speak but if there's something that i'm missing then i'd like to know about it. Better to make a whoopsy now rather than when i release it as it is.

One more thing: Base you criticisms on the new screenshots, not the old ones please. The old screenshots were before the cleanup phase and therefore i am aware of the problems with them. Criticizing those ones would be pointless, don't you agree.

I might indeed have been too harsh with you and I did base my statements on some of the older screenshots.

Sorry for being a jerk.

Well, some constructive criticism to each of the new monsters:

The purple snakey thing:
This one is actually pretty good at second glance. The body is spot on and it's facial expression is well done. Still the head looks awfully tacked on. It just seems so flat in comparison with the rest of the body.

The marines:
Most of the body is good, but I think the helmet could be a bit larger and those "ear"-like things be a bit more well defined. You really need to redo those shoulderpads though, they look awful.

The red horned monsters:
You need to make those horns darker and introduce some more shades in their shading. Right now they stand out too much and lack a solid feel. My main gripe with the face is the mouth. The eyes have a really good "glowy" feel to them, but look oddly expressionless.

The tank thingie:
Here the face is good for a change, but those caterpillar tracks looks more like retarded boxes. I know there are a point in them being rectangular, but they are far too angular. Also using alternating black and light gray pixel for treads doesn't cut it. Try to use a darker light gray and a really dark dark gray instead of black. Less contrast will make them seem less unnatural. Perhaps you should also devote more than two lines of pixels to each track segment.

The black monster:
Not much to say here, except that the white eyebrows look stupid.

The weapons are all nice and cartoony in the good way (though I assume the swordy thing is a work in progress).

And again, sorry for being a jerk. I should have looked more thoroughly before replying.

The sprites look fitting for a MangaDoom... but a little inconsistent. The purple snake guys... look odd with (is that a Hexen Body?) and a cartoon head. I would suggest drawing everything yourself to avoid clashing styles (says the guy who's TC is mumbo jumbled parts :P). I think the guns could look better for a Manga Doom however... have you ever considered a Cell Shaded Look to your sprites?

I whipped this up to try and show a few things that might help. I tried to give it a more cell shaded look with large flat coloured areas. More importantly I took away the pillow shaded effect on the gun. Pillow shading is where you coulour in a gradient style way, where the final effect has a "pillow" like softness to it. That's a stylistic choice however, and you can go for that if you feel it accomplishes the feel.

When can we expect to see MangaDooM?

__________________"Scuba is an asshat, just let him be his poor little self - starved for attention because his stupid ass Action DooM WAD didnt get the popularity he wanted it to get. -Chubz

.It does come as a slap in the face to discover that something that you thought was OK for months turns out to be insufficient. I don't see there a need to apologise however, though this could be because trying to attack me with an insult is like a mosquito trying to destroy a mountain. Nothing gets to me, so no worries.

.The gastor and Zael will be redesigned completely. You were right about how they don't capture the concept art's feel

.With the marine, the ears could do with more redefining, but i can't really make the helmet look bigger without making it look horrible. Taking a look at the original sprite i don't think it's necessary. The helmet may look small because the marine is a huge bloke. Besides the original doom got away with disproportionate human characters anyway. I dunno what you meant about the shoulder pads. Are you saying that less of a build up of tone or change the design because i quite like the design at the moment.

.The onitank will be redone as you said.

.As for the archvile (yes that's an archvile), i don't know about getting rid of the hairy eyebrows. I felt that they were a focal point on the monsters face. I've tried doing them in black but i don't think they capture the original design.

.Yes the sword will be looked at again.

.I have considered the cel shading look for doom but i rejected the idea as i felt that it would look ugly in the doom world when looking at the sprite from a distance.

.I suppose the shotgun can have more contrast other than that.

.I think i'll take a break from the sprites for the time being in favour of texturing, largely as it's hard to tell what makes a good sprite in this crazy world.

Having seen the concept sketch for the arch-vile I know what you mean.

Still, You should beware when using such huge contrasts. Right now the eyebrows doesn't look like they're made of hair. If you can make them two lines thick try to use two colours. If not try to use a very light gray instead of shock white.

Little Faith said:
Still, You should beware when using such huge contrasts. Right now the eyebrows doesn't look like they're made of hair. If you can make them two lines thick try to use two colours. If not try to use a very light gray instead of shock white.

Of course. Thanks for the tip.

What about the shoulder pad of the marine? In what way should i change them.

Right now they look as though you have just places a circular blot with a colour gradient.

I would suggest that you did them by hand first and then applied the gradient. Perhaps you should also try to make the gradient "hotspot" a bit off-centre. Preferably upwards. Darkening the very outer edge might also make them more defined.

And BTW, besides the Oni-tank none of your sprites need to be completely scrapped. All of them need work done on the faces, but you have been fairly good at the bodies, unless of course they are "borrowed" from somewhere and colour-shifted.

And if I was a bit harsh to start with it was merely because I didn't want to see the sprites in such a state in the final version.

it looks good. i like the colorful and nonsensical insanity (this also applies to your concept art, which is great). the biggest gripe i have is that you need to integrate the snake body more into the overall style. it stands out in a bad way. and i agree with all of little faith's advice.
also, for some reason your tc reminds me of an old sharware fighting game called time slaughter.